If you have it sitting in the shop…
We are no longer building saddle trees. We have two saddle fit videos available on our westernsaddlefit.com website. Western Saddle Fit - The Basics, aimed at riders, is available either on DVD or streaming on Vimeo while the six hour series Well Beyond the Basics, aimed more for professionals but understandable by anyone, is available by streaming on Vimeo. (We left this website up because we have had many requests to keep the information available.)
We shipped off the itty-bitty kiddie tree on Tuesday. Here is a picture of it and its partner finished. I’m really looking forward to pictures of the finished saddle. But while it was still here, we had a customer come to pick up a couple of trees we had ready for him. (The ones with the Taylor and regular cantles I talked about earlier.) Anyway, turns out he has an 18 month old grand-daughter. Yeah she’s small now but she’ll grow, and you know, she'll need a saddle to ride with Grandpa… Seeing that little tree sitting there inspired him and sure enough, we have an order for another one of these with some slight modifications.
We build a lot of wood post Packer trees for one particular customer. Why? We think it is because he built his wife a saddle on that style of tree and it sits in his shop as a show piece for customers to see. If they come in uncertain about what they want, they can look at pictures in his book. But it seems a lot of them see the real thing and say “That one looks nice. I think I’d like one like it.” So probably having display items like that in your shop isn’t a bad idea - so long as they are things you like to build more of! Has anyone else found this to be true for them?
